The myth of secular tolerance

by John Coffey

Religion is the tragedy of mankind. It appeals to all that is noblest, purest, loftiest in the human spirit, and yet there scarcely exists a religion which has not been responsible for wars, tyrannies and the suppression of the truth. Religion is not kind, it is cruel. A. N. Wilson1

Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. Jesus of Nazareth2

Summary The resurgence of religious violence at the start of the twenty-first century has reinforced the myth of secular tolerance – the notion that whereas religious believers are instinctively intolerant, tolerance comes naturally to the secular mind. This paper challenges the myth. It suggests that secular people are not immune from the temptation to persecute and vilify others, and argues that the volume 12 Christian Gospel fostered the rise of religious toleration.

Introduction number 3 On 15 September 2001, four days after the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York, Professor Richard Dawkins blamed the tragedy on something he called ‘religion’. Religion, he suggested, is ‘a ready-made system of mind control which has been honed over centuries’, and ‘teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is september 2003 not the end’. It is thus ideally suited to brainwashing ‘testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world [who] might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next’. By holding out the promise of an afterlife, religion devalues this life, and makes the world ‘a very dangerous place’. Dawkins ISSN 1361-7710 issued a stark warning: ‘To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.’3 In the wake of 9/11 Dawkins was widely praised for his ‘courageous’ statement, and other well-known commentators joined his private crusade/jihad against reli- gion. The Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee was just as stentorian: ‘The only good Writing group religion is a moribund religion: only when the faithful are weak are they tolerant and Denis Alexander PhD peaceful. The horrible history of Christianity shows that whenever religion grabs John Coffey PhD temporal power it turns lethal. Those who believe theirs is the only way, truth and Paul Mills PhD light will kill to create their heavens on earth if they get the chance.’4 The chorus Michael Ovey MTh MA was swelled by Matthew Parris in the Spectator, who theorised that Christianity and Julian Rivers LLM Islam were potentially violent because of two common features: a claim to univer- Michael Schluter PhD sality and a belief in the afterlife, which puts ‘another world’ before this one. By Christopher Townsend MA contrast, secular people who placed all their hopes in humanity and in the ‘here and Margaret Wilson BA DipTh now’ would not sacrifice temporary peace and prosperity for eternal glory. ‘Godlessness’, concluded Parris, ‘is a humanising force’.5 Donations It is easy to understand why these vigorous polemics against religion were The Jubilee Centre published after the attack on the Twin Towers. Secular commentators felt the need 3 Hooper Street, Cambridge CB1 2 NZ to vent their frustration at the religious zeal which had apparently motivated the Tel: 01223 566319 suicide bombers. They were, however, anxious to avoid charges of Islamophobia. Fax: 01223 566359 Attacking Islam was taboo, but attacking religion per se was acceptable. E-mail: [email protected] Condemning one-sixth of the world’s population was irresponsible; incriminating www.jubilee-centre.org/cambridge_papers three-quarters of it was ‘courageous’. Registered Charity No. 288783 Underlying the polemics of Dawkins, Toynbee and Parris was what we might

1 A. N. Wilson, Against Religion: Why we should live without it, Chatto & Windus, 1991. 2 Matt. 5:44–45. 3 R. Dawkins, ‘Religion’s misguided missiles’, The Guardian, 15 September 2001, p.20. 4P. Toynbee, ‘Last chance to speak out’, The Guardian, 5 October 2001, p.21. 5 M. Parris, ‘Belief in paradise is a recipe for hell on earth’, The Spectator, 22 September 2001. call ‘the myth of secular tolerance’. The myth is not that secular discourse in modern societies, for he combined a commitment to people can be tolerant, for often they are. Rather, the myth of tolerance with an equally strong commitment to free (and aggres- secular tolerance is that tolerance comes naturally to the secular sive) speech. As he famously said, ‘I disagree with what you say, person, whilst intolerance comes naturally to the religious but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ In many ways, believer. The myth suggests that simply by virtue of being secu- this has been a positive legacy, for it is surely a mistake to think lar, one is somehow immune from the temptation to vilify and that when we sign up for toleration we forfeit the right to engage persecute ‘the other’. This is a myth in the vulgar sense that it is in robust intellectual critique or even satire. a commonly held belief without solid foundation, a figment; but But Voltaire’s disdain for traditional religion had its dangers. it is also a myth in the technical sense – a moral tale that sustains He was surprisingly mealy-mouthed about the Roman persecu- and nourishes the culture and beliefs of those who hold it. tion of the early Christians and the Japanese persecution of six- Before assessing the myth, we should begin with a definition. teenth-century Catholics – he seemed to favour worldly pagan Tolerance has been traditionally defined as ‘the policy of patient persecutors over devout Christian martyrs. Moreover, Voltaire’s forbearance towards that which is not approved’.6 Tolerance is disdain for the Hebrew Scriptures and for Judaism helped to not the same as approval or indifference, for the tolerant person foster a new kind of anti-semitism.7 In Voltaire himself, these exercises restraint towards something that they dislike. A father strains of intolerance were kept in check, but in some later ratio- may be said to tolerate his son’s heavy metal music, for example, nalists they ran riot. As the historian Richard Popkin has pointed precisely because he dislikes it but refrains from banning it in the out, the basically tolerant deism of the American Revolution home. By contrast, intolerance involves the active attempt to stood in sharp contrast to the intolerant deism of the French suppress or silence the disapproved practice or belief. Of course, Revolution.8 In France, the deist revolutionaries launched a the means of suppression will vary greatly from context to con- fierce campaign of de-Christianisation during the Reign of text: a state may criminalise an activity and imprison or even Terror. Several thousand clergy were executed, and many more execute those who practise it; a voluntary organisation may expel were imprisoned. Even nuns were sent to the guillotine.9 Given an offender from membership; and polemicists may attempt to the right circumstances, deists could quickly forget Voltaire’s discredit or destroy an opposing viewpoint by subjecting it to commitment to tolerate those with whom one disagreed. vilification and abuse. In this paper, we will concentrate on polit- In this respect, the French Revolution established an ominous ical intolerance (the use of state coercion), and polemical precedent. For among the greatest figures in the secular rational- intolerance (the use of vitriol and stereotyping). ist tradition was Karl Marx. The movement that Marx founded In the first part of the paper, I will question the myth of sec- drew deeply from the well of radical Enlightenment contempt for ular tolerance by arguing that secularists have often resorted to traditional religion, and Marx was convinced that human eman- political and polemical intolerance. In the second half, I will cipation would require ‘the abolition of religion’.10 The militant suggest that the modern commitment to religious tolerance first atheism of Marx’s followers was to be the major source of emerged from within the Christian tradition. religious persecution in the world between 1917 and 1979. The Russian Revolution ushered in a period of repression and mar- The reality of secular intolerance tyrdom almost unprecedented in its scale. By 1939, not a single The roots of modern secularism are complex, but it is possible to monastery or convent remained open out of a thousand or more identify a continuous tradition of secular rationalist thought with which the Soviet period began. The number of churches was stemming from the radical Enlightenment of the eighteenth cen- reduced to barely a hundred, and thousands of clergy were arrest- tury. The Enlightenment was a complex phenomenon, and in ed and liquidated.11 In Communist China, things were just as bad. many places it had a distinctly Christian complexion. But radical According to one authority on religious persecution, the decade Enlightenment thinkers were fiercely anti-clerical and antagonis- of the Cultural Revolution in China (1966 to 1976) ‘was perhaps tic to the claims of revealed religion. Among the key figures in the largest intense persecution of Christians in history’.12 Even in this movement were the Dutch Jew, Spinoza, the English radical, contemporary China, Catholic priests and Protestant pastors John Toland, the French philosophes, Voltaire, Diderot, and often live in fear of arrest. Rousseau, and the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Some of The philosopher John Gray (himself a non-believer) has these men were deists, whilst others were atheists. But all recently highlighted the history of secular intolerance: emphatically rejected Christian claims to special divine revela- tion, and championed a sceptical and anti-supernaturalist world- The role of humanist thought in shaping the past century’s view. worst regimes is easily demonstrable, but it is passed The founding fathers of this radical Enlightenment believed over, or denied, by those who harp on about the crimes of that their movement would form a steadily expanding oasis of religion. Yet the mass murders of the 20th century were secular tolerance in a desert of religious bigotry. Voltaire was not perpetrated by some latter-day version of the Spanish convinced that rationalism would rescue Europe from the Inquisition. They were done by atheist regimes in the violence of the Christian past and propel it towards a tolerant service of Enlightenment ideas of progress. Stalin and future. He himself campaigned against the persecution of French Mao were not believers in original sin. Even Hitler, who Huguenots, and other deists like Thomas Jefferson and Frederick despised Enlightenment values of equality and freedom, the Great of Prussia made major contributions to religious toler- shared the Enlightenment faith that a new world could be ation. created by human will. Each of these tyrants imagined However, it would be a mistake to think that deists, atheists that the human condition could be transformed through and freethinkers have always been on the side of the angels (not the use of science.13 that they believed in angels). The tendency to stereotype and stigmatise ‘the other’ goes back to the very roots of modern 7 On the ambiguity of Enlightenment attitudes see A. Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment, Cambridge University Press, 2003. rationalism. Despite his impassioned pleas for toleration, 8 R. Popkin, ‘An aspect of the problem of religious freedom in the French and American Voltaire demonstrated little sympathy for traditional religions. A Revolutions’, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 50, brilliant satirist, he was scathing in his attacks on Jews, Catholics 1976, pp.146–61. 9 J. McManners, The French Revolution and the Church, SPCK, 1969. and Calvinists, whose cherished beliefs he scornfully dismissed 10 Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. D. McLellan, Oxford University Press, 1990, as absurdities. In this respect, Voltaire established a model for pp.43–44, 51, 62, 64. 11 See S. Hackel, ‘The Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe’, in J. McManners, ed., The 6 R. Scruton, ‘Toleration’, in A Dictionary of Political Thought, Macmillan, 1982. Oxford History of Christianity, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp.558–9. J. Horton, ‘Toleration’, in E. Craig, ed., The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 12 P. Marshall, Their Blood Cries Out, Dallas: Word, 1997, p.78. 10 vols, Routledge, 1998. 13 J. Gray, ‘The myth of secularism’, New Statesman, 16–30 December 2002, p.70. 2 Here then is a serious problem for those who subscribe to the Christianity and the rise of toleration myth of secular tolerance. Contrary to what Matthew Parris What then of the second component of the myth, the claim that suggests, Godlessness is not always ‘a humanising force’. One intolerance comes naturally to the religious believer? This is could justifiably amend the dictum of Polly Toynbee: ‘The clearly a central conviction of Dawkins, Toynbee and Parris, and horrible history of atheism shows that whenever secularism many secular people are convinced that the very idea of tolerance grabs temporal power it turns lethal.’ is a product of Enlightenment rationalism. During the Salman Of course, some would argue that the blame for this ‘horrible Rushdie controversy, the former Labour party leader, Michael history’ should not be laid at the door of secularism but of Foot, put it this way: Marxist-Leninism or Maoism. There is merit to this argument, as there is to the parallel claim that the Crusades and Inquisitions How the world in general, and Western Europe in partic- involved an ideological distortion of authentic Christianity. But ular, escaped from this predicament, this seemingly end- there may also be distinctive features of the secularist worldview less confrontation [between religions], is one of the real which foster intolerance. The secular myth of progress tends to miracles of western civilisation, and it was certainly not create a triumphalist and intolerant eschatology. People who the work of the fundamentalists on either side. It was done believe that the future is secular, and that only backward reli- by those who dared to deny the absolute authority of their gions stand in the way of progress, face a strong temptation to respective gods; the sceptics, the doubters, the mockers20 give history a helping hand by aggressively clearing these road- blocks from the highway to human emancipation. ‘I’m the Foot’s essential point – that religious dogmatism kills while future, you’re the past’ is a slogan that breeds intolerance, partic- religious scepticism heals – can seem persuasive. It is certainly ularly when the future must be realised in the here and now. In true that in medieval and early modern Europe, devout Christians the radical Enlightenment tradition, contempt for religion has – like Thomas More and John Calvin – often supported policies frequently been translated into policies of suppression. of persecution. In the sixteenth century, several thousand Dawkins and Toynbee, of course, clearly stand in the line of ‘heretics’ were executed because the Catholic and (to a lesser Voltaire rather than of Lenin and Mao. Although they disagree extent) Protestant churches believed that this would save souls by with what believers say, they would (one hopes) be willing to halting the spread of the gangrene of heresy.21 defend to the death their right to say it. Yet there is something a But Foot was wrong to suggest that the reaction against this little chilling about Toynbee’s statement that ‘The only good kind of persecution was initiated by secular rationalists or unbe- religion is a moribund religion.’ For his part, Dawkins seems lievers. In reality, the early advocates of religious toleration in determined to match the radical feminist claim that all men are sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe were devout potential rapists, for he clearly implies that all believers are Christians, and their case against persecution was fundamentally potential terrorists. theological.22 They had become convinced that the use of coer- On one level, such fighting talk is harmless. Sticks and stones cion in religion constituted a betrayal of the Gospel. The Gospel, may break bones, but words do not. Yet one wonders whether they argued, reveals that we are all recipients of divine toler- modern commentators have not crossed the boundary-line ance.23 Despite our rebellion against him, God the Father displays between legitimate vigorous critique and the crude stereotyping an almost incredible clemency and longsuffering towards us. which is the hallmark of polemical intolerance. By traducing the Instead of treating us as our sins deserve, he endures our hostili- faithful as potential terrorists or atavistic bigots, secularists obviate ty and offers us forgiveness. Like the Father of the Prodigal, he the need for reasoned argument and sensitive engagement with longs for the day when we will return to his embrace.24 ‘the other’. Casting off polemical restraint, they foster prejudice Tolerationists argued that Christians, who are so indebted to God and undermine the possibility of genuine conversation.14 for his tolerance towards them, ought to display mercy and Anti-religious polemics are particularly significant when they patience towards others.25 They underlined the words of Jesus: fuel an active campaign for state-sponsored secularisation. Polly ‘Be merciful therefore, as your heavenly Father is merciful.’26 Toynbee has written that ‘religion should be kept at home, in the Tolerationists pointed out that the mercy of the Father is private sphere’. The worlds of education and politics should be embodied in his Son. Christ comes to inaugurate a new kind of religion-free zones.15 The secularisation of British society by the kingdom, one not characterised by domineering rule or vio- state is also advocated by the philosopher A. C. Grayling, who lence.27 He is meek and lowly, persecuted but never persecuting. explains that this ‘would mean that government funding for In his declaration of his kingdom’s principles, he commands his church schools and “faith-based” organisations and activities followers to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, and do unto would cease, as would religious programming in public broad- others as they would have done to themselves.28 When his disci- casting’.16 Other commentators suggest that the state should stop ples try to call down fire on an unbelieving Samaritan village, he treating religious communities with kid gloves, and should start rebukes them.29 He rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, not a charger.30 imposing liberal or secular values.17 This echoes the argument of He is led like a lamb to the slaughter.31 At his trial he declares, some political theorists, who maintain that the state should ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’32 And in his Great actively promote individual ‘autonomy’ at the expense of tradi- Commission to his disciples, he teaches that his kingdom was to tional communities. But as the philosopher William Galston be extended by teaching, not by compulsion.33 warns, this autonomy-based liberalism ‘exerts a kind of homogenising pressure on ways of life that do not embrace 20 L. Appignanesi and S. Maitland, eds., The Rushdie File, Fourth Estate, 1991, p.244. autonomy’. Rather than protecting legitimate diversity, it under- 21 See B. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. 18 mines it. All of this begs the question: how much pluralism can 22 See P. Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West, New Jersey: secular liberalism tolerate?19 If secular intolerance is relatively Princeton University Press, 2003; J. Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, Longman, 2000, ch. 3. mild at present, it should not be underestimated. 23 Rom. 2:4. 24 Luke 15:11–32. 14 For a revealing analysis of secular intolerance see P. Jenkins, The New Anti- 25 Matt. 18:21–35. Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, New York: OUP, 2003. 26 Luke 6:36. 15 P. Toynbee, ‘Religion must be removed from all functions of state’, The Guardian, 12 27 Matt. 20:25–6. December 2001, p.18. 28 Matt. 5–7. 16 A. C. Grayling, ‘Keep God out of public affairs’, The Observer, 12 August 2001, p.26. 29 Luke 9:51–56. 17 See Roy Hattersley, ‘Religion can’t be used as an alibi’, The Guardian, 19 May 2003. 30 Matt. 21:1–5. 18 W. Galston, Liberal Pluralism, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p.23. 31 Isa. 53:7. 19 See J. Chaplin, ‘How much cultural and religious pluralism can liberalism tolerate?’, in 32 John 18:36. J. Horton, ed., Liberalism, Multiculturalism and Toleration, Macmillan, 1993. 33 Matt. 28:19–20. 3 For tolerationists, the New Testament church offered a star- Derrida points out that even Voltaire supported his calls for tling rebuke to contemporary Christendom. The primitive church toleration by appealing to the non-coercive character of the apostolic relied on the Spirit and the word, not on worldly force. The church. The Enlightenment critique of Christendom’s religious Apostle Paul teaches that the weapons of the Christian’s warfare violence remained profoundly indebted to the example of Christ are not worldly but spiritual.34 ‘Paul did war’, wrote the tolera- and the early Christians. As Oliver O’Donovan explains, tionist Henry Robinson, ‘but not according to the flesh; he did Christendom was ‘the womb in which our late-modernity came not imprison, fine, nor cut off ears, his weapons were only spiri- to birth. Even our refusal of Christendom has been learned from tual, the power and might of Jesus Christ.’35 The primitive church Christendom.’40 When critics of Christianity reprimand the had taken the way of the cross; it had eschewed violence and suf- church for its history of persecution, they echo the statements of fered persecution. As John Locke put it, ‘the Gospel frequently Christian reformers. declares that the true Disciples of Christ must suffer Persecution; but that the Church of Christ should persecute others, and force Conclusion others by Fire and Sword, to embrace her Faith and Doctrine, I The myth of secular tolerance is seriously flawed. There is no could never yet find in any of the Books of the New Testament.’36 good reason to suppose that secular people are immune from the Tolerationists highlighted the New Testament contrast temptation to suppress or silence ‘the other’. Indeed, in practice between the sword and the word, force and argument, coercion secularists have often been highly intolerant. Moreover, although and persuasion. Christ’s Gospel is not spread through physical the church has sometimes turned aside from the way of Christ by violence or abusive speech, but through the preaching of the resorting to persecution, the Christian Gospel was one of the word, persuasive argument, and holy living. As Paul teaches, ‘the principal sources of the rise of religious toleration. Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead he must be kind to The myth of secular tolerance offers a convenient excuse for everyone…Those who oppose him he must gently instruct.’37 If ignoring the truth claims of Jesus, and it provides a useful the Gospel undercuts religious coercion, it also fosters gracious propaganda tool for those who wish to discredit the church and speech. The Anglican Jeremy Taylor remarked that it was ‘one of marginalise the Christian voice in contemporary debate. So the glories of the Christian religion, that it came in upon its Christians need to question this reigning myth of secular society, own piety and wisdom; with no other force, but a torrent of and challenge the tendency of some commentators to stereotype arguments and a demonstration of the Spirit…Towards the and stigmatise believers. persons of men it was always full of meekness and charity, Yet we should resist the urge to retaliate in kind. We are called compliance and toleration.’38 to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us.41 Our speech The determination to reform Christianity by returning to New should be ‘full of grace’.42 In a pluralistic society, where moral dis- Testament principles produced some remarkable results. In North agreement can be bitter and profound, we should display civility America, three English tolerationists set out to create colonies and defend open and reasoned debate.43 The New Testament warns that would guarantee freedom of religion. The radical Puritan us that we will face hostility and persecution.44 It also gives advice Roger Williams founded Rhode Island, the Anglican John Locke that could serve as a motto for Western Christians in the twenty- helped to draft the constitution of the Carolinas, and the Quaker first century: ‘Live such good lives among the pagans that, though William Penn founded Pennsylvania, with its capital they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds Philadelphia (the city of brotherly love). Through their writings and glorify God on the day he visits us.’45 and example, these men and others like them helped to transform Christian attitudes. By 1700, support for the enforcement of reli- Acknowledgements gious uniformity was breaking down in the face of new ideas of An earlier version of this paper was given at the Centre for the toleration and religious freedom. Study of Religious and Cultural Diversity at Newbold College. I Paradoxically, this modern commitment to toleration had am grateful to Dr David Trim and to the audience for their com- arisen out of an attempt to go back in time to restore the simpli- ments on that occasion. city and peaceableness of the primitive Christianity. As the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, has suggested: 40 O. O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.194. 41 Matt. 5:38–45. 42 Col. 4:6. the concept of tolerance, stricto sensu, belongs first of all 43 See R. Mouw, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World, Downers to a sort of Christian domesticity. It is literally, I mean Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1992. 44 Matt. 5:10–12; John 15:20; 2 Tim. 3:12. behind this name, a secret of the Christian community. It 45 1 Pet. 2:12. was printed, emitted, transmitted and circulated in the name of the Christian faith.39 Dr John Coffey trained as an historian at Cambridge University. His research is on Puritanism and religious and political thought

34 2 Cor. 10:3–5. See also Eph. 6:10–18. in the seventeenth century. He is the author of Politics, Religion 35 Henry Robinson, Liberty of Conscience, London, 1644, pp.16–17. and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford 36 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, London, 1689, p.12. (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Persecution and 37 2 Tim. 2:24–25. 38 Jeremy Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, London, 1647. Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (Longman, 2000). 39 J. Derrida and G. Vattimo, eds., Religion, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998, p.22. He is a Reader in history at the University of Leicester.

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ISSN 1361-7710 4 © John Coffey 2003. Published by Cambridge Papers Limited